Saturday, August 13, 2016

Cripping Black/Green Addiction, 8-13-16

Drafting at the Gamma Ray! The good news first: I think I found my lane and drafted pretty well. Actually

Draft


Pack1



You know what's fun is picking four different colors in your first four picks! Assembled Alphas is obviously a great snap pick and then I bounced around. The pick 4 Boon of Emrakul is the first thing I really considered a signal, followed by a Midnight Scavanger. I stay locked in


Pack 2


Always good to see a Murder. The green & black feels nice and open culminating in a shocking 14th pick Gavony Unhallowed. Uh, it's a pretty good card you guys.

Pack 3



Rewarded by third pick Under the Floorboard (a solid bomb) and solid green/black all the way down. So what was my lane?

Draft Table

(left is down, so in pack 1, I passed to the guy whose name I forgot while receiving packs from Lili)

David W B
Drew W U
Lili R U
Your Hero, Jed G B
???  U R
Lukas R U
Chris W  G U
Ziab R G

Yup, black/green is definitely my lane! Not sure why/how three people ended up in Red/Blue (I might have screwed up Lukas's picks) but it was open and I had my choice now just to build a decent deck.



Deck





Tapped out link here

Results
I went 1-2, which felt a bit underperforming. I comfortably handled a pretty good R/G werewolfs; enough removal and enough early drops to slow them enough. Really dicey moment when he cast Ulrich with a transformed Neglected Heirloom into its +3/+3. Bit a staredown as I have my 7/7 Mokrut and a delirious Thraben. I draw a trick, he can't block both Menace and I win. Whew!

Sadly the other two games were not as good. David has a crazy good B/W deck with a ton of removal and a lot of width. Oh, and


Then finished up against Drew's B/U spirit tempo deck. None of my removal leads to a lot of aerial death.

Learnings

As many have been said before, "delirium" per se isn't really that strong. You're not getting a Vessel of Nasceny flicking on Delirium by turn 4. So it's more of a value play, good green & black cards with some longer term value plays. I liked having the ramp/early roadblocks (Primal Druid, etc.) I think the only change I would have made would be to ditch the Fork in the Road and Autumnal Gloom for, well anything else. I also really wanted to try a single Strange Augmentation which everyone says in unplayable, but I couldn't even pretend to justify it with  I think emphasizing self mill (Wailing Ghoul, Grapple with the Past)

Also, you may want to slightly emphasize Sorcery spells as there is not a lot to choose from. You have Cemetery Recruitment, Prey Upon, and Certain Death at common with Ruthless Disposal & Rise from the Grave at Uncommon. There's no 'delirium only" sorcery spells. To get that fourth card type maybe consider a mediocre artifact creature or enchantments (if you don't get the saucy removal enchantments)

MVP

I prefer to draft based on art-quality

SHOCKINGLY solid. Great with some graveyard dumping obviously but relatively immune to bounce (doesn't lose it's +1/+1 tokens like Gavony Unhallowed). I wouldn't jam this into every deck with swamps but with any sort of self-mill, it's awfully close to a win condition.

AWOL

I think 5/4 trample would have helped
Not as much as a 4/5 flier though
 
Seems like good cards to have drawn in my DELIRIUM DECK. Didn't seem like too much to ask.